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Fueling increased demand for energy: Electric wires in a slum in Brazil. (Photo credit: Robert Stone)

It’s not every day that two of the richest men in the world decide to back a documentary film that takes on a topic that has long been an environmental taboo. But that’s exactly what happened with Pandora’s Promise, a new film directed by Robert Stone, opening in 30 cities across the U.S. on Friday June 14. Stone’s exploration of several environmentalists who have come to support the use of nuclear power won over both cofounder Paul Allen and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.

“Even before Pandora’s Promise was made, I’d become convinced that nuclear energy should be part of the climate change solution. Once I saw Pandora’s Promise, I knew the film would get people thinking about nuclear in a whole new way,” Allen said via email. “I like that the film lays out the facts and then viewers can make up their own minds about nuclear power based on the facts and information presented. Documentaries like this open people’s minds and lead to informed decision-making, which is critical if we want to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.”

Stone, who had directed several other documentary films, describes himself as an environmentalist but was disappointed with the lack of progress environmentalists were having. “The traditional approach that the environmental movement has taken has met with abject failure,” Stone told me. “Bets on wind and solar and somehow putting a price on carbon – none of that is working.” Or at least, not to the degree necessary if environmentalists want to drastically decrease the use of fossil fuels.

Stone admits that his default position before making the film was against the use of nuclear power. In fact, the first film he made, which won him an Oscar nomination, was an anti-nuclear movie called Radio Bikini. But he became intrigued by environmentalists including Stewart Brand (founder of the Whole Earth Catalog), Michael Shellenberger (cofounder of the Breakthrough Institute), author Gwyneth Cravens and U.K. environmental activist Mark Lynas, all of whom had undergone a conversion and come around to support nuclear power. Some of what changed their minds: A realization that what we’ve been told by anti-nuclear activists over the years just wasn’t true. Yes, there have been some horrible accidents. But no one died at Three Mile Island, the film points out. Claims that 1 million people were killed at Chernobyl –- propagated by anti-nuclear activists like Helen Caldecott -- turn out, upon close examination of official documents by the filmmakers, to be just plain wrong: only 50 people were killed. It also comes to light in the film that the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl did not have a containment chamber and the plant was built to produce plutonium, not nuclear power.

The nuclear meltdown at Fukushima is of course the most recent accident, and Stone visits the plant there as well.”It was a deeply emotional experience… to go there,” he said. “Well, nobody has died and no one has gotten sick from radiation, and no one ever will. Your rational mind kicks off and your emotional mind kicks in” when faced with a disaster like Fukushima. His film does show the stark devastation around the plant.

It took four years for Stone to make the film. He got initial funding technology types in Silicon Valley. Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist at Venrock (who majored in nuclear engineering in college), told me he got a call from Jim Swartz, founder of venture firm Accel Partners, and serial entrepreneur Steve Kirsch (founder of Infoseek) asking him to support the documentary. Rothrock met with director Stone to get a sense of his goals, and Rothrock, Swartz and Kirsch seed funded the film two and a half years ago with enough money to make a trailer. Then they hosted a fundraiser in Silicon Valley and raised funds that allowed Stone to complete the film. The budget for the project, according to Stone, was “over $1 million.”

One of the people who watched the screening of Pandora’s Promise at Sundance this year was Bonnie Benjamin-Phariss, director of Paul Allen’s Vulcan Films division. She thought it was so well done that she showed it to Paul Allen, who, after several months of “vetting every detail in the film,” according to Stone, decided to finance a big chunk of the cost of distribution. Allen's sister, Jody Allen, who is president and CEO of Vulcan Inc., the investment firm she and her brother cofounded, is backing the film as well. UK billionaire Sir Richard Branson also came in as an executive producer after the film was complete. Branson's representative did not respond to a request for a comment.

A common aim for Stone, Allen and Rothrock is to spark a dialogue. “The goal of this movie is to start a conversation that we are not having as a nation,” explained Rothrock, adding that there has been a ton of innovation in nuclear power technology. Bill Gates is backing a technology called a traveling wave reactor; General Electric Hitachi has come up with a design for a version of a breeder reactor, called IFR ("Integral Fast Reactor") –which uses nuclear waste material as its fuel.

To be sure, not all issues of concern around nuclear power have been settled. But it's worth taking a look at the innovations in nuclear power, which may change the equation.

Even before the film officially opens, a dialogue has begun. Stone talked about showing Pandora’s Promise at an environmental film festival in Telluride, Colo. a few weeks ago to a packed house of about 650 people. “After we screened the film I asked the room if President Obama, as expected, suggests backing a new generation of nuclear reactors, how many would support him; 98% of the hands went up. It’s been consistent everywhere I go.”